Augusta+Bloom


 * SUMMARY: Augusta Bloom, age 43, died on March 3, 1916 after an abortion linked to Dr. James Struble in Chicago. **

On February 29, 1916, Dr. Nels Meling was summoned to the home of 43-year-old homemaker Augusta Bloom on North Kedzie Avenue in Chicago. The next day he sent her to Norwegian Deaconess Hospital. While there she made a deathbed declaration that she was suffering from the effects of a n abortion perpetrated by Dr. James R. Struble at his office. On March 3, 1916, 43-year-old Augusta died from massive infection. Struble was indicted by a Grand Jury on March 21, but the case never went to trial.

Two years earlier, Struble had been implicated in the abortion death of 24-year-old Frances Fergus, but that case had not gone to trial either. This was fairly typical for Chicago abortions of that era: a doctor or a midwife, often running very thinly-veiled abortion ads in newspapers, would send multiple women to the grave without losing either their license or their freedom.

Note, please, that with overall public health issues such as doctors not using proper aseptic techniques, lack of access to blood transfusions and antibiotics, and overall poor health to begin with, there was likely little difference between the performance of a legal abortion and illegal practice, and the aftercare for either type of abortion was probably equally unlikely to do the woman much, if any, good. For more information about early 20th Century abortion mortality, see [|Abortion Deaths 1910-1919].

For more on pre-legalization abortion, see [|The Bad Old Days of Abortion]

Sources:
 * Homicide in Chicago Interactive Database
 * "Dr. J. R. Struble Arrested After Death by Abortion," Chicago Tribune, March 5, 1916
 * death certificate



include component="tagCloud"